Comments on: Hey, Chinabounder ...

Hey, Chinabounder ...

RavinDave — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:04:34 -0800

Hey, Chinabounder ... There's 14,608,512 guys outside wanna have a chat with you! A self-described Western scoundrel in Shanghai [racey text] seems to be creating the biggest backlash against foreign devils since the Boxer Rebellion. Said to be an expat English tutor, he's been seducing women and writing up lurid accounts on his blog and shocking the indignant and conservative populace. Now there's a growing effort to track him down as the drama unfolds.

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:15:55 -0800

Kinda reminds me of a guy who posts on here sometimes.

By: liquorice

liquorice — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:17:33 -0800

Double.

By: runkelfinker

runkelfinker — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:22:07 -0800

Also - I doubt the whole population of Shanghai is male.

By: intermod

intermod — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:31:39 -0800

Looks like the blog was shut down / restricted overnight. Nobody deserves the angry mob justice that this guy will get if located / publicly identified, so I hope he's smart enough to just cut his losses and leave the country now. I know a huge meme building when I see it. The Karr story is over so watch out ...

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:41:41 -0800

I'm not sure what's the big deal, though. He's not raping people, and it's not like Shanghai girls have never seen a white guy before. Maybe Chinese people should get over themselves.

By: liquorice

liquorice — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:46:52 -0800

But white people bring down Chinese peeps property value.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:08:45 -0800

Huh? By "a growing effort to track him down" you mean a single blog with a single post?

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:16:07 -0800

With every comment on that blog, the effort GROWS! also - I know a huge meme building when I see it. ^ lol

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:17:20 -0800

From the blog: Being outside Western culture, a name is just a name to a Chinese student – why should it be anything else? And so quite often I meet young women who have chosen names such as 'Mayble,' 'Ethel,' 'Doris' and so on, names that would be met with a burst of laughter back home. I did meet a very beautiful chinese girl named "Agnes" once.

By: CheeseburgerBrown

CheeseburgerBrown — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:22:08 -0800

I once knew a Chinese girl whose name asked the eternal question, "Wai Ho?"

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:26:33 -0800

posted by thirteenkiller: Maybe Chinese people should get over themselves. They've tried getting over themselves, but there's more than a billion of 'em over there, and, well, it's just not that easy. I hear they're seeing a shrink, though.

By: jsonic

jsonic — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:56:16 -0800

Due to the Great Firewall, all my friends in China have problems seeing my blogspot site. One would think it might be difficult for the population of Shanghai to get angry about this guy's blog since they can't even see it.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 07:13:47 -0800

One would think it might be difficult for the population of Shanghai to get angry about this guy's blog since they can't even see it. That's a good point.

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 07:36:22 -0800

As much as the Wiki article on Boxer Rebellion contributed to the quality of the post, I wonder if there's any kind of scientific support for the claim that a few posts on one blog do in fact constitute biggest backlash against foreign devils since said event.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 07:55:53 -0800

Maybe he should try to acquire Scientological superpowers and make sure he's never found!

By: ninjew

ninjew — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 07:59:59 -0800

I know I'm a guy and all.. but that shit's creepy. Am I the only one that noticed?

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:03:01 -0800

The "who is chinabounder" site has one post and 56 comments since August 13... that's doesn't exactly meet the "Boxer Rebellion" expectations that were set up in the post!

By: Uther Bentrazor

Uther Bentrazor — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:07:01 -0800

So, some Chinese people are mad about a white womanizer living in China? Am I missing something?

By: klue

klue — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:10:40 -0800

here's what you're missing

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:13:45 -0800

On closer inspection it seems that a handful of other white people living in China are mad about a white womanizer living in China. Nevermind what I said about Chinese people getting over themselves. Chinese people carry on! Western expat guardians of Chinese virtue and innocence should get over themselves! Or, I don't know. Somebody should get over something.

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:18:06 -0800

Oh man! Now I'm confused!

By: Uther Bentrazor

Uther Bentrazor — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:19:55 -0800

Ok, he's a womanizer AND a racist/classist. I run into those all the time here in the states. Can't they just kick his ass or something?

By: msittig

msittig — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:23:08 -0800

To correct a couple misconceptions: 1) This story has been (relatively) all over the non-state-run Chinese media, especially new media. It's not just limited to a weblog or two. 2) Blogspot has been unblocked in China for about a month or so, which probably explains why this (relatively) long-running blog has just become an issue.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:23:50 -0800

Ever get the feeling that the PRC is going all right-wing on us? Obey the ~~Emperor~~ Party! Expel the foreign barbarians!

By: pracowity

pracowity — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:25:28 -0800

Somebody should get over something. Somebody's getting a leg over. Or at least pretending to for blogging purposes. Porpoises. Prepuces.

By: klue

klue — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:26:48 -0800

Last night I read Chinabounder's response to the post by Zhang Jiehai (linked above), wherein he showed no plans of stepping down. Quite the contrary, in fact. Looks like the mob has already succeeded in closing his blog.

By: alidarbac

alidarbac — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:30:02 -0800

Maybe Chinese people should get over themselves. You have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people!! I'm not currently behind the Great Firewall, but I've heard that the ban on blogspot sites has been lifted. This is the 中文 blog of the crazed psychology instructor who is manning the witch hunt. He's got some other doozies of posts like this one (here and here) where he interviews a couple of western girls living in China and desperately asks them how a Chinese guy can get a foreign girlfriend, whether indeed Chinese guys have smaller dicks than western guys, etc. Sample translation of one of the questions: 3.) 对于只有极少数中国男人有外国女朋友这一现象，我们调查了中国男人，他们有以下几种解释，分别是：个子太矮、英语不够好、不够富有、身体不够强壮、外国女人歧视中国男人（种族歧视）、外国女人都有艾滋病、中国女人比外国女人漂亮。你认为他们的这些解释哪些是真正的原因？哪些只是借口？ 3.) As to the phenomenon of so few Chinese men dating foreign women, we surveyed a bunch of Chinese men and these are some of the reasons they told us: Chinese men are too short, their English isn't good enough, not rich enough, not jacked enough, foreign women are racists, foreign women all have AIDS, Chinese women are more beautiful than foreign women. Which one do you think are valid reasons and which are just excuses?

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:37:50 -0800

From klue's link: One time he used three "dulls" to describe Chinese men. Chinese men must fight the Three Dulls! Ignorance will not stop him from bullshitting. He said, "All of the misfortunes in China are blamed upon someone else. China always has to find someone else to blame. It is the same from the national chairman to the ordinary people. Generally speaking, Chinese people are completely ignorant of their society and they are uninterested in learning about it." He wrote: "I can understand the anger of the ancestors of these Chinese students. But they have never been hurt by the Japanese." He mentioned that in a Tongjie University class, he asked a student, "It's been sixty years already. Why are you so angry?" He said that on one hand, it is the result of the Chinese government manipulating the emotions of the people; on the other hand, he also said, "China loves its pain; dancing with their pain is romantic to the Chinese." I'm not sure the original blogger was so far off on either of those points. A lot of Chinese people are really bitter about the Japanese invasion, to the point of being racist. And how often has the Chinese government apologised for the nasty things it's done? He even dared to openly engaged in activities to divide China. For example, he once asked a student from Xinjiang: "Is Xinjiang really a part of China?" At the same time, he told his students any number of times: "Taiwan is really an independent country." How terribly offensive! GOD FORBID. But after reading this piece of garbage's blog today, I must ask these Chinese women, "What is the matter with you?" I know that many of you don't understand what it is like outside of China and you don't realize that there are such pieces of garbage among foreign men. These girls couldn't possibly be choosing on their own to have sex with some guy, no no, they're forced or manipulated or blah blah, poor stupid girls. If that guy represents the Chinese opposition to Chinabounder's and his blog, fuck them all.

By: jiawen

jiawen — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:02:38 -0800

In my experience in Taiwan, which is somewhat related, local women usually date foreign men because they're more liberated than local men. That is, they don't treat them as shittily. Foreign men, on the other hand, date local women because they're less liberated than foreign women. That is, they don't mind being treated shittily as much. Basically, a happy medium of shittiness.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:02:26 -0800

not jacked enough What does that mean?

By: [expletive deleted]

[expletive deleted] — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:04:04 -0800

...seems to be creating the biggest backlash against foreign devils since the ~~Boxer Rebellion~~ Nanjing anti-African Riots. I suspect a great deal of this is simply the state run media using misguided patriots to divert anger towards foreigners and away from any criticism of the state. This kind of distraction works because these kinds of stories resonate with the Chinese people because they love their country, and find it easier to condemn foreign evils than to examine themselves. A core element of the collective Chinese psyche is indignation at real or percieved humiliation at the hands of foreign powers. This archetype will be reiterated in this story, but what this episode really shows is how in China it is in so many ways better to be an expat than a citizen, and for this, only the state is to blame.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:27:38 -0800

[expletive deleted] writes "This kind of distraction works because these kinds of stories resonate with the Chinese people because they love their country, and find it easier to condemn foreign evils than to examine themselves. " It's not particular to China. I seem to remember that "gay marriage" suddenly became a huge issue two years ago in the US when much more important problems should have been discussed more seriously...

By: oneirodynia

oneirodynia — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:35:50 -0800

This being university, I kept myself formal, teacherly, and tried not to hit on her too bad. This person is an English teacher? But enough of this; I have already vented spleen on the topic below. Taking a leaf from the fat psychopath's own book, I will get back to women. I'm outraged. The man is a fraud and buffoon. Someone should take away his teaching credentials. He has no business writing such terrible prose while calling himself "an English teacher". Seems like a bit of a creep, as well.

By: afu

afu — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:50:11 -0800

When it became common a chinese student in a world of warcraft clan had an affair with one of the clans founding members, people went apeshit, the tracked him done and had demonstarations outside his dorm room. They threatened his life and his family. They all got on WoW and performed ritual suicide. I'm afraid to think of what would happen if a white guy was invlolved. I bet I could track the guy down in a few days, the Shanghai expat scene is pretty small. He gives a lot of details about what hotels he goes to and about his classes so it wouldn't be that hard to narrow it down. I's probably just buy him a beer though. Anyone have links to the actual chinese news (not blog posts) about this?

By: afu

afu — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:56:45 -0800

Oh there are some links on that psychologists page, pretty hilarious.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 11:30:06 -0800

Faint of Butt : 'not jacked enough' What does that mean? I was curious too. I can't read Chinese, but can read Japanese, which can be close, and it looks to me that he meant "not strong enough", "not muscular enough". clevershark : "It's not particular to China. I seem to remember that 'gay marriage' suddenly became a huge issue two years ago in the US when much more important problems should have been discussed more seriously..." I'm pretty sure that campaign about gay marriage was about gay Americans getting married, not gay foreigners getting married. The point of expletive deleted's comment is not that Chinese people look away from their own individual faults at different marginalized groups (that's true for all societies everywhere), but that they look away from their own faults to foreign countries and foreigners. This is pretty unlike America, in general, where (until 9/11) pretty much all fault-looking was just as wrongly focused, but domestic ("It's the gays fucking up America" "It's the liberals fucking up America", etc.)

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:25:27 -0800

In his blog, he used extremely obscene and filthy language to record how he -- a foreign language teacher in Shanghai -- used his status as a teacher to dally with Chinese women, most of whom were his students. Yeah, the immoral foreigner. Nothing at all like their Great Chariman: Mao apparently believed that having sex with virgins "would help to restore and reinvigorate a man's health and vigor. Girls from throughout China were brought to his bed, some willingly and some not." Source: Mao's Women

By: [expletive deleted]

[expletive deleted] — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:26:45 -0800

I'm outraged. The man is a fraud and buffoon. Someone should take away his teaching credentials. He has no business writing such terrible prose while calling himself "an English teacher". My guess is this guy has no credentials besides being a native English speaker who is also white. That is all that you need to become an English teacher in China. Sometimes you don't even need that. My roommate in Beijing was Swedish, but his English was good enough that his accent could pass for Minnesotan. He claimed he was an American, and he had all the work he wanted.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:49:38 -0800

bugbread writes "I'm pretty sure that campaign about gay marriage was about gay Americans getting married, not gay foreigners getting married. The point of expletive deleted's comment is not that Chinese people look away from their own individual faults at different marginalized groups (that's true for all societies everywhere), but that they look away from their own faults to foreign countries and foreigners." You have completely and utterly missed the point there, sorry to say. The whole idea is to deflect attention from important things by pointing out that people other than you are doing something which is innocuous but appears unseemly to the majority. "Nationality" is just one manifestation of this "blame-the-other-ism", and (in China) an obvious one. Mind you, things are as you wish to see them. If you want to get lost in the details and lose the big picture, well, that's your choice. If anything has become obvious in the past few years it's that right-wingers see the typical New York liberal every bit as foreign to themselves as the Chinese see the typical Englishman.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:50:39 -0800

And anyway, "chinabounder"'s written English sucks, as has been pointed out in this and at least one past thread.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:18:56 -0800

clevershark : "You have completely and utterly missed the point there, sorry to say. The whole idea is to deflect attention from important things by pointing out that people other than you are doing something which is innocuous but appears unseemly to the majority. 'Nationality' is just one manifestation of this 'blame-the-other-ism', and (in China) an obvious one." I understood your point. And I agree with your views. My point, which you have missed, is that you completely and utterly missed [expletive deleted]'s point, which, I believe, is that nationality is the group that China chooses as "the other". His point wasn't about generalities; I think (hope) we all understand those generalities. His point was about a certain specific case, which people are aware of to less of a degree. I think you missed that point. clevershark : "If you want to get lost in the details and lose the big picture, well, that's your choice." Looking at details doesn't necessarily make one blind to the big picture. I can look at exactly how fast things fall on Earth, or Mars, or Pluto, without forgetting that things fall. I can point out that Windows has a different GUI than OS X without losing the big picture that they're both operating systems. I can look at who people pick as their "other" without losing sight of the fact that people in general pick groups as others. And I can discuss the fact that people pick certain groups as "others" without losing sight of the fact that we exist. I suspect [expletive deleted] can as well, and his point was not restating something we all know as true, but to put forth his opinion on the particulars of the mindset of typical Chinese, based on the fact that he lived there, and most of us have not, so while we may all know the general, we may not know the specifics. I'd be rather surprised if you didn't have the same ability to look at details without losing sight of generalities. I find it more likely that you just had the reflex MeFi habit of interpreting anything that happens anywhere in the world as an opportunity to talk about America.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:20:33 -0800

clevershark : "And anyway, 'chinabounder'"s written English sucks, as has been pointed out in this and at least one past thread." Dunno what the "anyway" is there for, but, yeah, I think we can all agree that chinabounder is not exactly a Poet Laureate.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:44:13 -0800

Well, yes, I think there's a parallel, but it goes to illustrate that this is not a "typically Chinese" issue, but a universal one -- how people will get sidetracked from important issues that will affect them in their daily life by being directed to look at what is essentially trifles instead. In China it takes a white guy with (probably largely BS) stories of sex with Chinese women, elsewhere it's people of the same gender wanting to marry, in yet other places it's people who worship a deity *not* by praying facing Mecca 5 times a day, etc.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:09:36 -0800

Right. I think we're just talking past eachother. I guess I consider the universal issue pretty common knowledge (at least among MeFites), so there's not much to be gained by reiterating it. Sure, it's important, but importance can't be the lone barometer of posting priority, or we'd just spend all day talking about how our bodies need oxygen. That's incredibly important, but we all know that, so instead we talk about detailed stuff that may be less important, but which we don't all know. This artist. That news item. Specific quirks and foibles of different nationalities. As I say, what you're saying about humanity's general tendencies is one that I totally agree with. But what's interesting to me are the specifics, not the generalities. After all, we talk about Bush and Iraq and terrorism, instead of just talking about how generally everyone dies at some point, how governments often do stuff that pisses off citizens, etc. We know we're all going to die, we know that no matter what country we live in, the government will piss us off. But instead we focus on details like how will we die? When? Why? What will the gov't do to piss us off? How pissed off will we be? I'm not saying you shouldn't discuss generalities. I'm just saying that I don't think really big generalities were [expletive deleted]'s point; I think his point was specifics (er, to the degree that a generalization about Chinese in general can be described as "a specific").

By: [expletive deleted]

[expletive deleted] — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:12:15 -0800

I think I should elaborate on my first post, as it seems to have created some confusion. While Clevershark certainly has a point, I think Bugbread is right to say no one here would disagree. My point was more specific. The "immoral foreigner violating Chinese women" is a common outrage. The link in my first post is about this same outrage on a much larger scale in Nanjing immediately prior to the Tian'anmen Square protests. Even during the latter protest, there were banners and slogans referring to the Nanjing incident, e.g. the chant "Kill the black devils!" The Nanjing riots were triggered by the dating habits of African students on scholarship, but the outrage during that more politically tumultuous time was directed also towards the government for giving African students larger scholarships and generally more rights and privileges than native students. The Nanjing protest eventually became a larger one about reform and human rights, and spawned protests in Beijing that would aggregate with others to comprise the melting pot of discontent that was the Tian'anmen Square protests. Of course, this raises the question of why the state-controlled media would press this issue, if in 1989 this same kind of outrage was one of the currents that converged in the Tian'anmen Square protests. I don't think that there is any overarching strategy behind this, and I don't think that this would have received any official attention if it had not already generated noise on the internet and in other alternative channels. That said, this story probably serves the aims of the propaganda machine in three ways: to uphold the myths legitimising the Communist Party, to keep the outrage focused on foreign immorality and not on the state's preferential treatment of foreigners and finally to discredit foreign criticism of the Chinese state. The Communist Party of China bases it's legitimacy primarily on its putative role as the liberator of China from foreign humiliation and oppression. These foreigners are typically either the Western powers and their allies like the Guomindang, or the Japanese. The lurid tale of a hotel orgy with hundreds of Chinese prostitutes and Japanese men in Guangdong a few years ago is an example of a case where the Japanese are the ones symbolically re-invading China with their phalluses. The word "liberation" and its relatives appears quite frequently in CPC propaganda. Stories like this serve to reinforce the idea that the CPC is needed to keep China from being once again enthralled by perverted foreign devils. The second aim is pretty self explanatory. The Nanjing protests went in a direction that was completely unwelcome, and the cause for discontent still exists. The fact remains that foreigners are better treated in China than citizens. This is partly due to a tacit acknowledgement that the Chinese state treats its people in a way most foreigners would find completely unacceptable. It is also due to the state's ham fisted attempts to ingratiate itself to the international community. This is evident in such absurdities as the very preferential treatment given to foreigners at Chinese universities, and the ease by which even total incompetents can get work teaching English, even without a work visa. On Chinese universities, Chinese women are typically not allowed in the foreign student dorms, especially not at night, but that doesn't change the fact that the foreign student dorms are much nicer than the ones for Chinese students. A more egregious example of this eagerness to please foreigners is the way the state fights workers rights and resists even enforcing existing environmental law in order to attract more foreign investment. The CPC wants the outrage to remain on the perverted foreigners, and not the system that affords them more rights than Chinese citizens. Finally, I think there may be a conscious effort here to smear foreigners as immoral and lascivious beasts. After all, if they cannot even get their basest instincts under control, why should any virtuous and respectful Chinese person believe what they say about the state or party?

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:04:24 -0800

I was completely unaware of the "Nanjing incident" referred to here, I'll have to look that up. I misread those as references to Nanking. That being said, it's pretty clear that certain local elements within the CPC have, in recent years, incited a great number of demonstrations and riots aimed at sending a message outside of China, generally towards Japan. If one actually believes that tens of thousands of Chinese spontaneously ordered and read the Japanese textbooks they were protesting, one is quite gullible indeed; it's a pretty clear-cut case of manufactured outrage. Likewise with the Muslim cartoon riots. How many people know that the cartoons were published a full four months before those "spontaneous" riots broke out? and only after radical clerics from Denmark toured the Middle East to plan and coordinate the outrage, too. The world is so full of people who are just desperate to become other people's puppets while only vaguely understanding what they're so violently demonstrating against that it's enough to make someone give up watching the news altogether.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:22:06 -0800

clevershark : "I misread those as references to Nanking." Nanjing is the new romanization for Nanking (like Beijing is the new romanization for Peking). I wasn't aware of the incident either, but there's a good writeup on wikipedia.

By: 1adam12

1adam12 — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:52:36 -0800

I know people like this blogger. As a foreigner in China you are the subject of both distrust and extreme exoticism. You stick out like a sore thumb wherever you go, particularly in smaller or more remote cities, and as a result anyone who feels the least bit fed-up with their lives will probably be drawn to you. I didn't know a single exchange student who was interested in meeting a Chinese woman who didn't manage it. Most guys eventually get tired of the constant attention. But for some people being suddenly interesting becomes addictive, and they turn into terrible womanizers. There seems to be an unending supply of bright, curious Chinese women who will fall for the first man to pay any attention to them at all. And so we have this guy.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:05:02 -0800

bugbread, clevershark, and all others interested in what happened at Nanjing in 1937, I recommend this site. Warning, some of the photos are gruesome and horrifying. It was certainly one of the most dreadful events of the century.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 19:20:52 -0800

There appears to be a bit of confusion between the Nanjing incident and the Nanking massacre.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 19:46:16 -0800

Yes, clevershark, sorry to add to the confusion. The "incident" and the "massacre" are 2 different things. And the Wikipedia link that bugbread included in his earlier comment is yet a third incident altogether! Bugbread's link of course has a closer correlation to the discussions specific to this thread. Sorry to derail...

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 20:08:00 -0800

So I see.

By: asok

asok — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 04:34:21 -0800

I dare say the CPC wouldn't be too upset if this particular person's political views were not looked apon favourably by Chinese readers due to his being something of a self-proclaimed priapis.